Stop Wasting Hot Water in the Shower with the Road Runner Showerhead

Photo credit (right): joyner0101

Low-flow showerheads are one of the standard answers to the question, "How can I conserve water at home?" There's no real sacrifice involved; you can still clean yourself every day, you just use less water doing so. We've featured lots of the water-saving devices as part of our advice for saving water when you shower, but this one is worth a special mention.

See if this sounds familiar: you stumble in to the bathroom in the morning and turn on the shower. While waiting for it to warm up to "wake up temperature," you check yourself out in the mirror, pick at your teeth, rub the sleep out of your eyes, pat your head and rub your belly, or do whatever until you can verify that hopping in the shower won't be like joining the Polar Bear Club. Unless you've been standing there with your hand under the tap, waiting for it to get just right, chances are that a precious few drops (or a precious few gallons, depending on your showerhead and how long you've been preening) have escaped down the drain.

That phenomenon is a thing of the past with this smart head; when the water temperature reaches 95 degrees (plenty warm for getting started, at least), it automatically shuts off, letting you know that it's warmed up and ready; you can finish brushing your teeth or gazing at the scale at your leisure, since you aren't pouring water down your tub's drain anymore.

Roughly equitable to turning off the tap when brushing your teeth, this showerhead outputs 1.6 gallons per minute (GPM)-- not the smallest number we've ever seen, but significantly less than the 2.5 GPM that passes for "low-flow" these days. Combined with the handy shut-off feature, it is estimated that a family of 3 will save more that $230 on utility bills and more than 7,600 gallons of water per year; imagine what you could save if you found someone else to share your shower with or went with a Navy shower.

Need more convincing? Check out the video below, confirming that the showerhead indeed flips itself off at the prescribed moment. It's available for US $39.99 from ::Clean Air Gardening via tipster Lars